How to Teach Live-Tweeting to Journalism Students

Guidelines for effective print news writing and web writing have been well-covered; however, guidelines for journalistic Twitter writing have not been well established. I developed some writing guidelines for a live-tweeting assignment in my digital journalism class, and these guidelines are everything that is taught in traditional journalism classes.

News tweeting needs to follow a journalistic writing style

When a reporter is assigned to live tweet an event and feed tweets to the news media’s Twitter account, he or she should write tweets in a way different from the (casual and cursory) writing style of his or her personal Twitter accounts.

I felt the need for some Twitter-writing guidelines when teaching a digital journalism class in fall 2012. I designed a live-tweeting assignment for students to live tweet the homecoming celebrations at our university. As required, students were tweeting texts, photos and videos; but one issue emerged – the writing. If there was a sizable audience following these tweets, they may quickly lose interest if all they read are tweets such as:

▪ Had so much fun at homecoming! Club, music & sports…can’t wait til next year!

▪ Thank you to all the families who came out to support the clubs, organizations, and athletics

▪ I wish I was little so that I could get on the moon bounce

▪ Impressed with what they have lined up

Besides, the photos and videos students tweeted/shared usually did not have necessary and properly-written captions or synopses.

Tweet writing guidelines for my digital journalism class

Noticing the writing issues from last semester, I put together some writing guidelines for live-tweeting assignments next time I teach the digital journalism class. This will also be the rubric with which I grade student projects.

Use third-person writing: audiences are following the event, not the reporter, so avoid using first-person pronouns such as “I/me,” “we/us,” “our,” etc. And avoid tweeting about your personal opinions and comments.

Looking at the above guidelines, one may realize that, for the most part, it is what a newspaper reporter needs to do for a print news article. And this again echoes what I have said in several other posts – the time-tested “old” journalism is still basis for good digital journalism.